The present invention relates to the art of telephones in general and, in particular, to a column and lever construction particularly useful in charactered telephones.
Charactered telephones are telephones having a fanciful character as an integral part of the telephone. The fanciful character makes the telephone an appealing consumer item.
A telephone ringer, dialer, network, and hook switch must be housed in a base housing.
For maximum impact, the character of the telephone stands freely from the base housing. The character must be supported against various in-use loads. For example, a character comparatively tall with respect to the base housing can be subjected to lateral loads which induce substantial moment loads between the character and the base housing.
It is highly desirable to provide a uniform base housing and functional accoutrements so as to be able to accept characters of different personality without changing the base housing and other functionals.
Part of the appeal of a charactered telephone is the ability to use something of the character while using the telephone. That is, to implement the character functionally into the telephone instrument is desirable. This must be done without loss of the appeal of the particular character being used.